The Revenant

[dfwmtx]

I wonder how many actors/actresses were secretly there packing heat. You'd be surprised about the threats the big names in Hollywood get, and when a CA CHL is just a few thousand dollars donation to a certain sheriff's fund....

[McClarkus]

Well crap, now that you mention it, I kinda liked Waterworld and the Postman too. Then again, I can be easily entertained as needed. Sometimes I watch something just because it IS bad and I CAN do it. Boredom levels fluctuate as needed when alcohol levels do likewise…..

[Jered]

So this movie is basically Avatar IN HISTORY...

I take it Leonardo DiCaprio once again showed his best moment was when he drowned [strike]with the entire cast of Downton Abby[/strike].

[Aesop]

I wonder how many actors/actresses were secretly there packing heat. You'd be surprised about the threats the big names in Hollywood get, and when a CA CHL is just a few thousand dollars donation to a certain sheriff's fund....

In your dreams.
If you live in L.A. County, you aren't getting one. Ever.
The last Sheriff of L.A. was just sentenced to federal prison, BTW.

OTOH, OC is on hold pending the outcome of San Diego v. Peruta; Ventura County issues them anyway, provided you simply pass a background check (which is impossible to fail if you passed the DOJ/NCIS check to buy the handgun in the first place).
The number of people in Beverly Hills etc. with CCWs can be counted on one's thumbs.

The further from the coastal nutjobbery you get in CA, the more where you live resembles Free America.

As for the pampered princes and princesses of Tinseltown, their drivers and retinues are armed security, who would be present even if AMPAS declared the Oscars a gun-free zone, and LAPD normally floods the event with about 100+ plainclothes cops in addition to the very visible hundreds in uniform, including no small number of the "seat fillers" who swoop in to fill chairs when the stars have to pee.
It simply wouldn't do to have someone pull a Paris Massacre on live international broadcast with 1B+ TV audience members glued to the event.

In short, there are more guns at the Oscars than at the Camp Perry National Matches, or a meeting of the Five Families.
Just not in the actors' hands, or holsters.

As I've noted in blogging about The Biz, prop masters handing hot weapons to actors - ANY actors - with even blanks borders on professional negligence and depraved indifference to the consequences of their actions.
E.g., in the Indian ambush massacre scene in Last Of The Mohicans, one of the re-enactards, with just blanks, launched his ramrod across the scene and pole-axed another guy dozens of yards away, who mercifully survived, but only after three feet of rod was removed from his torso.
Pity they couldn't have hired that guy to work on this godawful flick, to maybe thin the herd a little.

[blackeagle603]

Add me to the liked The Postman list. Watched it more than once. Maybe it's my WesPac movie watching conditioning. Low threshold for what entertains, same as for what passes for Midrats.

[308Mike]

As I've noted in blogging about The Biz, prop masters handing hot weapons to actors - ANY actors - with even blanks borders on professional negligence and depraved indifference to the consequences of their actions.

I was recently watching one of those FBI Take Downs episodes and I happened to catch a glimpse of one of the uniformed cops holding an AR with the empty chamber flag still protruding from the bolt/chamber. Nowadays, I've also noticed that anyone with a 1911 is running around, ready to shoot, with the hammer down. Also, during and, at the end of a shoot-out, with 1911's and DA autos, the hammers are still down - even while shooting on the run moving from cover to cover.

Oh, I've also started to notice that every time they show someone loading a gun, the round's primer has already been fired/punched. WTF is up with THAT (I'm sure there's a story to go along with this change in practice)??

[Aesop]

Oh, I've also started to notice that every time they show someone loading a gun, the round's primer has already been fired/punched. WTF is up with THAT (I'm sure there's a story to go along with this change in practice)??

That's just shitty camera work.
When you're an armorer/propmaster, you can make dummy rounds by
a) Punching out the expended primer from spent casings, and setting a piece of solid bar stock in the hole, then maybe filling it with some sand for weight, and crimping a new bullet in place. Or
b) leaving the expended round alone, maybe put some sand in the case for weight, and crimping a new bullet in place.

If I had, e.g., an M3 halftrack and wanted to make a belt of .50BMG dummy rounds look cool for a display for the 4th ofJuly Parade, I'd choose Option A, for me, because no one else would ever fiddle with it.
But if I'm a propmaster, and choose Option B, then hand dummy rounds to various and sundry jackholes on set, ranging from the A-list actor, all the way to the near-minimum-wage extras in soldier suits/SWAT gear/whatever, I now have made a dummy round that can't be distinguished from live rounds. By anyone. Except by firing it. Oh, which then probably leaves a dent.

So not wanting to set myself up for a lawsuit, let alone Brandon Lee 2.0, I elect to give them the rounds with expended primers left intact, because I'm not stupid, but actors are.

Then I tell the DP/director not to shoot views of the dummy rounds close-up, because everyone at home will then see they're dummy rounds.

They will then give me either Cinematic Excuse #21:
We're not seeing that.
Or #22.
No one is looking at that.
or Excuse #23:
If they're looking at that, the movie must really suck.
Failing that, they'll go back to Excuse #5:
We can fix it in post-.
I.e. post-production.
But they won't, because that costs more money, and they're stupid about things like realism, but dead-on balls accurate about not spending money on that kind of stuff. Fruit baskets and massages for the star? No problem. Not pulling the propmaster's pants down on film? &@#! him, he got his check.

So the camera will see it, people watching will see it, they won't fix it in post-, and the show will suck a little more on realism.
QED

Once in a blue moon you'll get actors reloading, like in Heat or Open Range, but ten times as often you'll get silly shit like focus shots on dummy rounds, and hammers down or slides back while actors run around with guns, because directors etc. think the audience is too stupid to notice.

This is one of the key differences between Orson Welles or Steven Spielberg making a movie, versus hacks like Ed Wood or now Alejandro Inarritu:
Attention to detail.

[Jericho941]

Screen Junkies get their digs in

[Aesop]

Nice, and balls-on-accurate, but even 2 minutes of clips from the movie is 2 minutes of the movie too much.
And they forgot to ding dumbass Leo and the writers of that POS for eating raw food ten feet from blazing fires.

What I'm waiting for is the next 10 years of Robot Chicken scenes Seth Green & Co. can get out of claymation riffs on The Farce Awakens.

[Jered]

Once in a blue moon you'll get actors reloading, like in Heat or Open Range, but ten times as often you'll get silly shit like focus shots on dummy rounds, and hammers down or slides back while actors run around with guns, because directors etc. think the audience is too stupid to notice.

I think in Hidalgo they at least made an effort.